Alessandra has Graduated!

Any occasion worth celebrated always deserves a cake! The latest occasion was the graduation of my cousin-in-law who recently graduated from Concordia University with a teaching degree, and now has plans to go on and do a special certificate in order to teach English as a second language. This in itself is a wonderful achievement as there are only a few people accepted into the programme. This girl is going places and she was very deserving of a big party to celebrate this notch, and so with copious amounts of food and a nice big cake we honoured her and her brain!

Congrats Alessandra, you're awesome!!  

The pieces to go on top of the cake.

A big red sugar rose for Alessandra.

A chocolate seal for the scroll... my own little addition, stamped with the seal from my Grand Dad's tannery.

I hand-painted the scroll, I wanted to include her graduation year...

... and at the other end of the scroll, I painted Concordia's motto.

All topped off with a grad cap!

Alessandra's favourite colour is green, so naturally the cake had to be green!

 All put together!

With a little help from Justin, Alessandra cut the cake. Hope you enjoyed!!

Cake Inserts

Whether it's a last minute contribution or a pre-planned one, it has happened once or twice this Summer where I've made cakes for people when I'm not at home.

The first time was when I was visiting my Uncle Paul and Leslie. During one of their evening performances they knew that one of the guests was celebrating their birthday, so Leslie made a scrummy gluten free chocolate cake for the birthday Boy. Leslie decided to use her resources to her advantage (my being there) and asked if I would mind decorating the cake for her. Of course I said yes, after all I wanted to help them out for the performance. Once the cake had cooled, I mixed up a quick chocolate icing and did a "knife-job" decoration (this is what I seem to do when I don't have my kit which includes a pallet knife and I have to improvise). To finish it off, I sprinkled blue sugar on the cake.

Leslie was very pleased with end result, and insisted on taking my picture with the cake 

(apparently I dressed to match!!)

The second time was most recently at my other Uncle, Doug's cottage. Every August we get together at his cottage to honour my Dad. My Aunt Beth, being very organised, assigns us all meals which we're responsible for, and I bet you don't need two guesses to tell which meal I got! Specifically, she assigned "dessert" to both my Mum and to me, so my Mum suggested we bake a cake to bring ("which you should read as "you can bake a cake" ", she told me through a cheeky grin) so I figured I'd bring up the baked cake (red velvet at Mum,s request) and all the fix'uns then assemble everything on site. I also made Pina Colada Bars which too went down a treat!

Another "knife-job", and it did the trick! (what do you think of my improve-cake stand!)

I can't do everything, but I can make cake, so this is what I shall do to contribute!

A Taste of the Corporate World

As I mentioned on my FaceBook page, I had a stupidly busy week this week. I had a very large order for pops to go to a corporate event celebrating two consumable products (which between you me and the lamp post, I don't know exactly what they are, fibre I believe) created by this company. A few weeks back, I was asked to make a cake using a recipe they had adapted to incorporate their products. Already I was in uncharted territory. Then using the cake made with this recipe, I made the pops and decorated them with a somewhat corporate theme. This time round, my client did not ask for a cute animal or for the pops to be doused in their child's favourite shades of pink, no for this order my client wanted their their logo drawn and spelled out in cocolate. Clean and simple. This reminds me of the Accessible Pops I made for my church a couple years ago. Normally, the designs I make come from my brain, so no matter how they turn out, I can always say that's what I had hoped for. In this case, however there was an image I had to stick to otherwise this wasn't going to look like anything (no pressure!). My client seemed very happy with the pops, so hopefully they'll help promote their product well!
...and now I can get some sleep!

 Will all 150 pops on the table, I had somewhat hijacked the kitchen...

 Next, each got a flask.

and under each flask, my trusty toothpick spelled out their company name.

 Then after all was decorated, each was bagged and tagged.

 All the pops were then layered in a box.

 And here's the box...

 And this was how they looked once they arrived at the event. 

I love the tray!!